LONDON, Aug 17 — In the hours before Ukrainian soldiers stormed across Russia’s western border, there was no sign from Moscow that anything was amiss. At midnight at the start...
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The footage did not specify the exact time of the visit, but revealed no concerns, or knowledge, of the events unfolding in Russia’s western Kursk region that threatened to upset Gerasimov’s plans and shift the course of the two-and-a-half-year war. With Ukraine’s forces retreating in eastern Ukraine, one of the most strategic sectors of the front line, Moscow may well have assumed Kyiv would not make a high-stakes gamble that even now it is far from clear will pay off, Michel said.
The Russian defence ministry did not reply to requests for comment. Ukraine’s armed forces declined to comment about the ongoing operations, and the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to questions. Russian officials in such staged settings “say what they think the boss wants to hear or to see in public at that specific moment”, Michel said.It took nearly 12 hours from the time of the incursion, which Gerasimov stated as 5:30 a.m. on August 6, for the defence ministry to publicly acknowledge Ukraine had attacked the border, let alone broken through it.
From about 5 a.m., alarm began to spread on social media. Locals posted that shelling in Sudzha, a Russian town on the border, had been going on for three hours. By 8:15 a.m. Native Sudzha was reporting “active fighting on the border itself”. But a widely read Russian war blog was dismissive. Instead, he found himself supporting the advance toward the border crossing near Sudzha after the assault units moved in, he said in an interview, giving his only first name in line with military protocol.Just after 10 a.m. governor Smirnov confirmed for the first time that Ukraine had attempted an incursion but said Russian soldiers and border guards of the FSB security service had “prevented” the border from being breached.
About an hour later, Russian news agencies published the first word from the central authorities about the situation. It was from the FSB, saying Russia had “repelled an armed provocation.” Yet last fall Ukraine’s National Resistance Center, created by the special operations forces, said in an online post that reconnaissance showed “almost all the strongholds are deserted of personnel and equipment” along the border with Kursk, and said corruption was a factor.
Brady Africk, a US analyst mapping Russia’s defences, said those in Kursk region had fewer anti-vehicle ditches, obstacles and fighting positions when compared to Russian positions in occupied southern Ukraine, where a Ukrainian counteroffensive stalled last summer.
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